Death To A Butterfly

Name: Death To A Butterfly
Start: 2025-02-23T16:30:00+1100
End: 2025-02-23T19:00:00+1100
Location: Antipodes HQ

Sun, 23 Feb, 4:30pm - 7pm AEDT

Antipodes HQ

south melbourne, australia

Antipodes Theatre Company

172 followers · Contact host

Event description

SUN FEB 23 4:30PM

In-Development Staged Reading: DEATH TO A BUTTERFLY, A New Musical by Andy Freeborn (they/them) and Jess Ramsey (they/she)

"Just as queer people go through the journey of finding themselves, so too are we finding Henry, Lilian, Gab, & Loie throughout this piece of artwork; from ashes is a person, and community reborn. People made of burnt scrapbooks, diaries, letters, essays, art works and poems." - Andy & Jess

On a lavish Welsh estate, a church reborn into a theatre becomes a haven of queer creativity, and the setting for breaking the boundaries of gender identity, kindling the spark of desire, and discovering what it means to love.

Henry and Lilian, bound together through marriage, learn to see each other for who they are as they face the pressures of family duty and societal expectations.

Death To A Butterfly is a story of queer identity and queer erasure, inspired by the extravagant and indulgent life of Henry Cyril Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey.

Music, Lyrics & Co-Book: ANDY FREEBORN (they/them)
Director & Co-Book: JESS RAMSEY (they/she)
Musical Director: DAVID BUTLER (he/him)
Actors: BAILEY DUNNAGE (he/him), SOPHIA KATOS (she/her), ALESSANDRA MERLO (she/her), J RIDLER (they/she/he), and LUISA SCROFANI (she/her)

Warnings: Death or dying, Themes of queerness, queerphobia, mild sexual references and scenes

Approximate Running Time: 2 hours 30 minutes with one interval

Part of Antipodes’ inaugural Summer Lab, providing ongoing development support to previous Winter Lab projects (Antipodes’ flagship development program, established in 2020). Each of the seven Summer Lab projects will culminate in either a one-night-only performance, a staged reading or in-development ‘sneak peek’ open session as part of Festival of the Unseen.

Tickets for good, not greed Humanitix dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity

Hostinformation

Antipodes Theatre Company

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Antipodes Theatre Company seeks to provide a collaborative and inclusive environment for producing independent theatre in Melbourne. Programming includes: full-length plays and musicals, cabarets, live events, year-round workshops for artists, and supporting new work and local writers through our Winter Lab and ongoing development initiatives.

Our aim is to produce challenging and enlightening work that embraces duality within the human condition. Work that looks at situations from a unique angle or exposes what it is like to step into someone else’s shoes. Antipodes was founded, in part, by New York City transplants who currently find themselves as close to the antipode of that location as they are ever likely to be.

Previous productions include Orlando (World Premiere), Guys and Dolls (two 2024 Green Room Awards, thirteen nominations), Passing Strange (Australian Premiere, five 2023 Green Room Nominations), And She Would Stand Like This (Australian Premiere), Sam Martin's Sam I Am (Victorian Premiere) and Ghost Quartet (Australian Premiere, two 2020 Green Room Award Nominations with return seasons in 2021 and 2025).

Finally, Antipodes strives to maintain an inclusive and safe work space through a minimum of 50% representation – on stage and off – by women, ethnically diverse artists, people with disability, trans or non-binary people, seniors, or other members of historically or culturally marginalised communities who are not well represented on stage.